


Scapegoat

by Lagerstatte



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Attempted Murder, Bathing/Washing, Blood and Violence, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-19 03:49:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14866049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lagerstatte/pseuds/Lagerstatte
Summary: It was impossible for tensions not to be high in overcrowded Lestallum; the city groaned under the weight of the desperate survivors, the last of humanity.Ignis – flaunted for being Insomnian taught, a Crown employed tactician and politician – was proffered to it as both solution, and scapegoat.





	Scapegoat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [egelantier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/egelantier/gifts).



> With love <3

Ignis had known the choices he'd been making in the Lestallum administration were both decisive and divisive. He'd known that he, an Insomnian taught, Crown employed tactician and politician, had been flaunted as the solution to Lestallum's endless problems of logistics, authority, management on every scale. The people had been told – reassured – that it was he who decided who was turned away from the desperately overcrowded, understaffed and undersupplied hospital. It was he who decided who were forced out of their family homes in order to cut buildings into single rooms like student dorms, army barracks. Who to leave in the dark, without electricity, when there were power shortages and the daemon lamps took priority. The choices no one else wanted to be blamed for.  
  
Solution, and scapegoat. So he'd known he was unpopular. He just hadn't realised how much.  
  
It was the end of the day, at some point in the long, monotonous stretch between getting home and going to sleep. Prompto was out with the other hunters, but Gladio had said he'd be spending a quiet night in after training Iris; Gladio, therefore, might be persuaded to have a late dinner together, or at least share the room companionably as he worked and Gladio read, or plotted out hunting routes that both cleared the trade paths and kept as close to the nearby havens as possible. His room was next to Ignis', so knocking on his door to ask would be easily done, and waste neither of their time if he was already busy.  
  
What was the time? It was quieter than it usually was.  
  
The clock he kept on his desk had the glass cover removed so he could feel the position of the hands. He reached out to read it – late enough to bother Gladio about dinner? – then stopped short, checking again. The clock read twelve-thirty. Surely it couldn't be that late. He could have sworn he'd only been working for a couple of hours. And it couldn't have stopped at noon, because he'd read the time on getting home and it had been running and correct then.  
  
Distracted, Ignis ran his fingers over the braille he'd written during a meeting, not reading any of it. How could he have lost several hours? He didn't think he'd dozed off. The air felt thin, unsubstantial. He couldn't concentrate. He had a headache developing. Getting ill? He hoped not, but it might explain the missing hours.  
  
His eyelids – or, at least, the right eyelid – felt abnormally heavy. He was tired – exhausted, really. Had it been such a long day? He didn't think so, but his head was dipping, each thought becoming hard to grasp. If he really was so tired as to fall asleep at his desk, maybe he ought to go to bed and wake up early to work in the morning instead. Sleep off whatever illness was bothering him.  
  
No. This wasn't normal. He knew his body, his tolerances. This was very much not normal.  
  
Ignis made to stand, but his head went light the second he was on his feet. The floor felt like it was rocking and would throw him slip-sliding across the room if he lifted his feet. He gulped for air, meaning to sit back down, but his body refused to cooperate; his knees buckled and sent him knocking into the chair, tipping it over and him sprawling on the floor. Oh. Definitely wrong. Should he take a curative? He braced himself on his elbows on the floor and took a deep breath through his mouth, then another, then another. No good. It was a struggle to think; his heart was racing, chest heaving as he tried to suck in enough air. Light headed. Low blood pressure. A fever? Or he'd been drugged.  
  
Gladio. He ought to alert Gladio, or Prompto. His phone... Where was Gladio? Should he shout for help?  
  
Something in him rebelled at the idea, heart rattling. It wasn't safe. The blackness around him stretched out, every part reeking of potential for hiding an enemy. Fear gripped him. He shouldn't bring attention to himself until either he knew it was safe or he could look after himself. If he were in danger shouting would only alert whoever had done this to him that he was suitably helpless.  
  
Find someone. He was – he was in his room in Lestallum. He was safe, surely. Ignis pushed himself to his feet, but fell before he reached the door. Pain in his knees where they hit the floor hard. His head was spinning; disorientated, he couldn't remember the direction he needed to go. Where was the door? It was – he was–  
  
'Gladio,' he tried to say, but it came out a rasp, barely loud enough to make out even had Gladio been in the room with him. Gladio was – he didn't know. He should know but he couldn't think, couldn't move, couldn't hear over his own ragged panting. He tried to grasp for a potion, an antidote, but the armiger seemed suddenly very far away, and the things in it like items sitting on the bottom of a deep lake.  
  
The door opened, then shut. The sound of something Ignis could not decipher, dull and wooden. He lifted his head but he knew if he tried to move from where he knelt, hands and knees, he'd achieve little more than falling over. He squeezed his eyes shut, bowing his head, trying to suck in enough air. His chest felt constricted; he couldn't breathe. He could feel his body shake, hard, trembling with his ragged breaths.  
  
When something landed on his shoulder and pushed, Ignis fell. He landed heavily, rolling onto his back.  
  
A weight on his chest. Something covering his mouth, sticking his lips shut.  
  
'You thought you could screw us over,' a voice said. Ignis grasped at the leg of the woman pressing her knee down hard on his chest, but his hands were weak, arms trembling, and he couldn't shove her off.  
  
'Well you can't,' she said, and the blood was roaring in his ears, the floor spinning even as he lay flat on it, but he could hear the rough snarl of her anger.  
  
He couldn't move. His breath whistled from his nose, hard and fast, not enough. Suffocating. His back arched uselessly, heels scuffing the floor.  
  
Pain cut through Ignis' upper left arm – a small, sharp blade sinking through him, missing the bones, tip hitting the floor with a bump and grind. Ignis breathed in through his nose, harsh, choking, at the same time the woman made a shocked, breathy noise.  
  
He tried to roll, buck her off him, as the knife slipped out of his arm and blood started to soak his shirt sleeve. A hand pinned his shoulder and the knife impaled his right arm. It scraped against the bone, catching on it as she tried to force it in. Too blunt to cut its way down, the woman swore and yanked her blade back out.  
  
The noise that Ignis made was garbled, smothered by the tape over his mouth and the air whistling through his nose, short and desperate. His head pounded, spinning. He couldn't grasp hold of anything from the armiger, weapons and curatives slipping past his fingers, like dandelion seeds. He'd lost all sense of direction – he might as well be falling with his attacker through space, an open void. He couldn't hear beyond the roar inside his own head. He couldn't feel except the weight of the woman on him, the agony in his arms and chest. Heat from the blood, his face burning up as he tried and failed to breathe.  
  
The knife slipped into his gut, between ribs and navel, meeting little resistance from his soft insides. Bright, burning agony. The feeling of blood pouring out of him in spurts in time with his heartbeat. The knife withdrew, pushed back in a few inches to the right. Blood pouring into him as he clutched at the wound to shut it, feeling the blood get sucked into his body cavity, the red, wet spaces between his organs.  
  
The hand at his shoulder had slid over his neck, slick with sweat, and tangled in his necklace. The chain pressed into the flesh of his throat.  
  
Outside of the pain and hot wetness of blood, Ignis realised his necklace was about to snap. Dissociated, he could feel it strain, the tension, metal cutting into the skin of his neck. Inside the feel of it he reached out into the armiger and grasped a knife, one of his daggers, and held up his hand to the woman's side even as he summoned the knife into the material world.  
  
She screamed, rearing back off him. The dagger jerked from his hand, clattering to the floor. The sound of a crash, then reedy moaning.  
  
Gladio's voice, something banging. He couldn't tell if it sounded distant because Gladio was himself distant, or it was another victim of his ears no longer working. The sound of himself moving, rolling onto his front, was muffled, flat, as was the sound of liquid splattering to the wooden floor. Only the noise of air in his nose, wet and rapid and shallow, was loud and real, and it surrounded him like deep water.  
  
Pain like fire as he was flipped over onto his back, slammed down, jarring. The knife gripped his throat as it slid down into him, pinning him to the floor like a tent peg, and everything else dropped away in the utter terror of the two conflicting signals – to move, and to not move. To escape, and to not give the blade any more reason to slice open more of his flesh. His hands found hers around the handle of the blade.  
  
His heart beat. Blood poured out of his neck, a wash of heat, draining to the floor.  
  
The knife flicked sideways. The world collapsed down into a tight ball of pain, worse than any he'd ever felt, wrapped like razor wire around his throat, the knowledge that he was dying. Ignis curled up on his side, head tucked into his chest. Blood sprayed, like water from trying to block a tap with his hands.  
  
More sounds, but even more distant than before. Dark and cold and sinking. A sound in his throat, blocked from his mouth by the tape, low and thin. A scream, running on fumes.  
  
The floor tilted. He couldn't feel anything but pain and cold and the feeling of his body draining out.  
  
He wouldn't be there for Noct's return.  
  
Maybe he'd get to meet him again in the afterlife – if the gods were kind. The gods, thus far, had never been kind.  
  
He'd always imagined that dying would be painful, but death itself not so. Death, he'd always thought, would be the release from pain.  
  
He could feel death creep over him, and it hurt, worse than anything: his heart trying to pump blood that was not there. Torn organs shutting down. The spinning loss of sensation and his brain knowing that it was suffocating, trapped in a stagnant puddle, no blood, no oxygen, cell death.  
  
His body was rolled, limp, onto its back. That hurt, too. The wash of magic over him was agonising as it pushed life back into him, pinched the edges of his wounds and melting them back together. Ignis grasped at the tape over his mouth but a hand was already on it, unsticking it carefully, rolling it off his skin. Pushing away the hand Ignis tore it off it one go, and gasped, gulping in air in giant, trembling motions that rocked his whole body. He retched, sobbed, shoving away the hands trying to grab his shoulders. Twisting onto his knees he stumbled to his feet, knocking his shins against the legs of his chair that had fallen next to him.  
  
'Ignis! Iggy–'  
  
The sound of running feet, people crying out in shock, doors and feet and dozens of voices all shouting at once. The door slamming. Gladio's voice.  
  
'You're safe, Iggy. Just me in the room.'  
  
It didn't sound like it. He could still hear shouting. Ignis leant back against the wall so he didn't fall over, so his back was guarded, and tried and failed to grasp his daggers. The emptiness of his hands made his heart beat so hard as to be sickening. A noise, quiet movement in front of him. Ignis' breath hitched; his head snapped towards the sound.  
  
'Just me.' Gladio's voice was pitched low, soothing. There was some significance in that, some way he ought to be reacting, but for now it was out of reach. His clothes were wet, cooling fast, sticking to his skin. His nose and throat were filled with the thick stench of blood. The floor seemed to pitch and spin under his feet. Scraping sounds, footsteps, voices. The tightness of panic trying to burst from his chest, throat, skull. He needed to – he couldn't – he couldn't–  
  
'Ignis? You with us?'  
  
'I–' Ignis said. His throat closed up. He could still feel the knife slipping through the meat of his neck, and feel the arterial spray of his own blood. He tried to swallow and couldn't tell if the stinging pain was real or imagined.  
  
His arms and stomach still hurt, too. He thought he might still be bleeding. He couldn't tell.  
  
He couldn't breathe. His throat was still sliced open. His hands were trembling where he held them, weaponless, in front of himself.  
  
'Ignis, sit down.' Gladio again, but the words glanced off him. There were other people but he couldn't tell who. He couldn't breathe. His head was like a tin of wasps, rattled hard. Defend himself. He need to, but he couldn't, not without weapons or his sight or even being able to hear clearly–  
  
A wave of faintness, a shudder running the full length of his body. The sound of knocking and Ignis flinched, hard. The wall twisted and dipped and Ignis slid down it, like he'd been bucked from it, and ended up slumped on his knees.  
  
No good. No, he needed – Ignis pitched forwards, attempting to push himself up again, but he lost the wall at his back. He stumbled backwards, but couldn't find the wall, only open space, puddles on the ground.  
  
'Ignis!' He turned towards Gladio's voice. It was sharp, a command. 'Stand still.'  
  
Ignis stood. His whole body was shaking. He couldn't breathe. The sound of someone approaching. A blur of noise. Hands on him, pushing him down, and his knees buckled.  
  
'Tell 'em to fuck off,' Gladio was saying. 'Iggy, give me a nod or something if you can hear me.'  
  
Prompto's voice, the murmur of words Ignis could not parse.  
  
'Bastards must have slipped him something,' Gladio said. His voice rumbled through Ignis like the motor of some large machinery. '... I'll get him to the hospital.'  
  
Prompto, much closer now, said, 'Think we should get him cleaned up first? He looks, uh. More blood than Daemon Pit Slaughters III. We should check if he's okay, doesn't have more injuries...'  
  
A weight on Ignis' shoulders. Ignis reached up and touched his neck, very carefully. Smooth skin, sticky but whole.  
  
His hands shifted to his arms. Faint pain, but no open wounds under the slashes in his shirt sleeves.  
  
'Iggy?'  
  
He couldn't quite speak, but he made a low noise and allowed his body to slump. Gladio pressed up against his side, a solid, hot weight. Ignis' hands trembled as he ran them over his stomach, tired even from that tiny exertion. His fingers caught on his torn shirt, but couldn't find anything but undamaged skin.  
  
'Think you're alright to get cleaned up first, or you wanna go to the hospital first?'  
  
Gladio's voice was a vibration through his chest. Getting carried through Lestallum in this state would be a sight the various citizens did not need to see. Unsettling for them, humiliating for him. Even through the fog, he was sure of that. Ignis twitched his head, a minute shake.  
  
'Wash,' he said, word coming out a croak, thick, like coughing up a ball of dough.  
  
Gladio picked him up, cradling him to his broad chest, and Ignis let himself go limp and allow it. The tight grip and sway of Gladio's steps were half a reassurance and half making him feel panicky all over again, vaguely sick. It was improper as well, and he'd very probably regret it soon, but that feeling was dim and distant and at any rate there were few other ways to get to the bathroom. He knew he wouldn't be able to walk.  
  
He could hear voices, but not immediate. Footsteps, but they were the light trot he dimly recognised as Prompto's, returning from down the corridor, then turning back to lead the way, then back again. He must have sent everyone away, Ignis though, and managed to be exhaustedly glad for it.  
  
'Go get him some water, rehydration salts. At least a litre.'  
  
'Roger.'  
  
Prompto's footsteps fell into a jog, nervous energy, and dropped away. The bathroom was a few degrees colder than the corridor. Damper, empty. Gladio knocked Ignis against the door as he leant against it to close and lock it, and the bump made Ignis' body tense up, and the memory of open wounds running through him like electricity.  
  
'How're we gonna do this,' Gladio muttered, but it seemed more directed at himself, and he didn't press for an answer when Ignis didn't reply.  
  
He sat Ignis down on the closed toilet seat; Ignis braced himself on Gladio's shoulders as Gladio peeled off his blood soaked trousers and underwear, shimmying them off Ignis' hips. The fabric stuck to Ignis' skin. The air was cold, making his hair prickle. Gladio was undoing the buttons of Ignis' shirt when the door rattled, and Prompto's voice on the other side said something muffled, indistinct.  
  
'You gonna fall if I move?' Gladio said, then sighed and grabbed Ignis' legs to twist him around, pushing him to lean sideways against the toilet cistern. He disappeared, and Ignis tried to concentrate on the sound of the door over the smell of the toilet even through all the blood, the creeping feeling of filthiness, and the itch in his throat.  
  
Gladio's hands landed back on him, twisting him around again before starting back on the buttons of his shirt. 'Hey, buddy,' Prompto said, like he did when talking to nervous wildlife. There was the soft bump of a glass on Ignis' lower lip when he lifted his head. 'Can you drink this for me?'  
  
Ignis opened his mouth – wanting to say, irritably, that he wasn't a child and didn't need to be treated like one, even as he knew he didn't have the energy to actually say it. Prompto used the opportunity to tip the glass and let a little of the liquid to pour into his mouth. Obediently, Ignis swallowed, and tried to keep still as his shirt was unstuck from his shoulders and peeled down each of his arms in turn.  
  
Gladio's hands were running over his stomach, thumbs digging in to where he'd been stabbed. Ignis squirmed – the memory of pain and injury lingering, more than anything else, his body still confused by the magic reversing what it knew should still be there.  
  
'It's crazy, isn't it,' Prompto said, quiet, and took away the glass for a moment to let Ignis breathe. 'Seven years ago he'd be like, airlifted to the hospital, emergency blood transfusions, drugs, therapy, enough magic to fix a beheading. The works. Now he gets an orange flavour rehydration packet and one potion. Even, y'know, before, we used to toss elixirs around like nothing.'  
  
'He's going to the hospital after this,' Gladio said, but his tone was in tired agreement.  
  
'And he's still completely out of it. What if it was some kind of poison and not just something to knock him out? What if his heart just stops right now?'  
  
'Then we'll give him an antidote and another potion and screw the regulations. Worst case scenario is we use a phoenix down and deal with Cor bitching us out later. Relax, Prompto. I'm not going to let him die.'  
  
Listening to them either side of him, it was almost easy to forget they were talking about him. He wanted to reassure them, get up and brush off his illness, go file a report on his attacker. Gladio's hands had fallen still but remained on his waist, hot, broad, holding him just tight enough.  
  
'I know, I know,' Prompto was saying, as he lifted the glass to drain a bit more of the salty, sweet, vaguely metallic tasting drink into Ignis mouth. 'It's bad, isn't it – I'm a shit person for it – but I mean, one of first things I thought when I saw was, what're we gonna tell Noct? When he gets back and we have to say, sorry dude, Iggy – Iggy didn't – he didn't make it. Died years ago–'  
  
His voice broke off into a gasp, words twisting. The sound of the glass getting placed hard on the tacky linoleum floor.  
  
It hurt even to hear the words, the tight, harsh breathing. A sharp pain lodged in Ignis' throat, burning behind his eyes, though he couldn't tell how much was the idea of Noct's grief – admittedly vain – and how much the raw sound of Prompto's distress. He reached out to where Prompto's voice came from, bumping into the side of his head. His hand felt like it was filled with silt, wet and heavy and useless, as he moved it to Prompto's shoulder. Prompto reached up to grasp it, tight.  
  
'If I hold him d'you think you can wash him?' Gladio said. There was the feel of movement, Prompto shifting, though doing what, Ignis couldn't tell.  
  
'Sure,' Prompto said, though the word trailed off like he had more to say, but ran out of breath.  
  
'I could do it myself,' Gladio said. More movement, deeper this time. Gladio's voice, closer. 'Sorry, guess I'm still – ugh.'  
  
'Was a lot of blood, huh.' Prompto's voice was still too light, too breathless. Ignis wanted to stop them talking, but the concept of opening his mouth and speaking seemed very abstract, unfairly complex, far too full of pitfalls.  
  
'Going to be a bitch of a job cleaning it.'  
  
'Ha,' Prompto said. 'Wait, dude. He's going to have to stay with one of us until it's done, right? I call dibs.'  
  
Gladio laughed and wrapped an arm around Ignis' waist, the other hooking below his bent knees to lift him. 'C'mon, then', he said, and Ignis let his head loll against Gladio's solid chest. Gladio was naked; when had that happened? Heat crept into him from Gladio's bare skin, like lying in a sunbeam. Prompto let go of Ignis, but only to place his hand on his knee, keeping it there as they made their way to the shower.  
  
'Maybe if I – hold on.' Prompto's hand disappeared, and there was the sound of the rattle of the showerhead being pulled from its setting. 'Crap, wait…' The plastic clatter of the showerhead against tile; indistinct noises. The sound of fabric being tossed to the floor. Ignis thought he would smile if he weren't so tired.  
  
Water, hitting the enamel of the bathtub. 'Fuck, fuck, cold–' Prompto yelped, and Ignis breathed out a sigh of laughter.  
  
They waited, listening to the sound of the water splashing against the enamel bathtub, until finally Prompto said: 'All right, bring him over.'  
  
The water hit Ignis' bare skin like bullets, gravel, heat scraping him raw. Gladio hefted him until he was more or less standing, with his hands under Ignis' armpits, holding him up. The spray from the showerhead hit his chest, and a cloth, slick with soap, followed the water. Ignis' head nodded forwards, and jerked back when he got caught in the spray.  
  
'This is,' Prompto said, after a moment, 'uh, can't you hold him differently? He looks kinda… that can't be comfortable.'  
  
'He won't get clean if I hold him properly,' Gladio said. 'Ugh. Hold on, turn that off. '  
  
Ignis faded for a moment, drifting down into unconsciousness, and came to at the touch of a cloth, dripping wet, against his cheek. He shifted, stretching out his legs and reaching down with his arms, finding himself sitting on Gladio's legs, his back to Gladio's chest. He reached forwards and found Prompto, kneeling in front of them with a bucket filled with water.  
  
'Just gonna wash your face,' Prompto said, a second before his hand tilted Ignis' chin up, holding him still while he smoothed over Ignis' face and hair with the cloth. 'You okay, dude?'  
  
The cloth continued to run over him, down his neck, over his shoulders, his chest, washing away the stickiness of the blood. Half-way down Ignis' chest Prompto stopped and carefully poured the bucket over his shoulders, his back, chest, belly and legs. Then came the sound of the taps on the other side of the bath, and Gladio pulled Ignis in a little closer while the bucket filled.  
  
It was, Ignis thought, a good thing they were in Lestallum, where it was perpetually warm. He could feel the hairs on his legs start to rise, gooseflesh forming. At his back, under him, Gladio was a wet, heavy heat.  
  
Prompto used the fresh water to wash his face again, his neck, then caught his hands to dip them in the bucket and scrub them, his fingernails and palms, the sensitive skin between his fingers. He moved up Ignis' arms, holding him carefully, making sure he washed down every square inch, up to Ignis' armpits, and then down his sides. Gladio pressed his lips to Ignis' neck as Prompto washed his stomach, hips, between his legs. Except for the splashing they worked in silence. The touch was gentle, rhythmic, the water just on the right side of hot. With Gladio behind him and Prompto in front, even naked and blind, he couldn't quite remember a time he'd felt safer. At some point Ignis let his body relax, stopped fighting the dull pain, and drifted back off.  
  
'Hey, Iggy. Iggy.' He was being carried, again, cradled to Gladio's chest. Perhaps he'd complain about it later, but for now his whole body ached, weak and muddled, and it was all he could do to sigh in response, lifting his head fractionally. At least he was warm, the fluttering panic gone from his chest.  
  
'Got some more water for you. Drink up,' Prompto said, and Ignis waited for the bump of the glass against his lip before opening his mouth. He was dressed in clean, loose clothes, and it bothered him that he didn't remember that happening in the slightest.  
  
'After this it's the hospital,' Gladio said, low, rumbling through his chest and into Ignis' bones. His breathing rocked Ignis very slightly. 'You feeling any better?'  
  
They wanted an answer, a verbal one most likely, though posing the question while he was drinking had been poor foresight. Ignis lifted his head perhaps half-way through the glass, and swallowed, arching his back to give his ribs more room to expand.  
  
'Better,' he managed, though the word slurred slightly, dropping the hard sound of the t. A trail of water ran down his chin. _I'll be fine,_ he tried to say, but it came out even worse, a mumble of noise barely intelligible at all.  
  
He wished he could walk to the hospital, but knew he'd never make it. At least he wasn't bloodied, clothes torn, as well as limp. He accepted the water as Prompto pressed the glass back to his mouth.  
  
'It's been over an hour,' Prompto said, low, an undertone, as if Ignis weren't with his head within two feet of Prompto's. 'He should be... you think?'  
  
'Hour's not that long for the drug to clear his system. So long as he's not getting worse,' Gladio said, and dangled the end of his sentence, finishing instead with a gentle shrug. 'Still. Should get going.'  
  
They manoeuvred Ignis onto Gladio's back, as marginally more dignified than being carried in his arms, and Ignis buried his face in the crook of Gladio's neck. He concentrated firstly on hanging on, and secondly not throwing up. Prompto's hand appeared and disappeared on his thigh, the small of his back, his knee. He tried to orientate himself as Gladio walked, matching their turns with the road layout he ought to know, but even after a few minutes realised with weary resignation that were Gladio to put him down, he'd be utterly lost.  
  
It was galling, to be so helpless, but his head was spinning and his whole body weak, bones like cardboard. His heart was beating shallow and rapid in his chest; his breathing matched it, rasping in his throat. His mouth was dry even after drinking, eye itchy and sore. He was cold despite being pressed up against Gladio's back, but his body couldn't seem to muster the energy to shiver.  
  
It was good, perhaps, that he couldn't seem to hear very well. He was sure there must be people talking about him, and Gladio carrying him, and Prompto tagging by their sides, the three of them in an absurd procession. But perhaps it was also bad, given that he knew he ought to be able to hear. He didn't want to consider the fact that something may have affected his hearing permanently.  
  
Would Noct get back to find him well and truly crippled, one disability on top of the next?  
  
It was cold. 'Almost there,' Prompto was saying, hand on his leg, squeezing in a way Ignis was sure ought to be gentle, but in fact hurt not insignificantly. 'Hang in there, Iggy.'  
  
His stomach churned uneasily, not made better by the slow realisation that he was getting worse, not better.  
  
It was his status that got him laid out on a hospital bed with minimal wait, he was sure, given that he knew full well there had been a disaster with a hunter's outpost collapsing under the strain of daemons not last week. Even before that the hospital's supplies – including beds – had been at disastrous lows.  
  
In Insomnia, he'd taken for granted immediate and outstanding medical care. Now he lay on a scratchy hospital bed in a ward no doubt full of other patients – not that he could hear or see or make them out in any way – and was achingly, overwhelmingly glad just to be lying down.  
  
He couldn't begrudge them for making him wait for a doctor. He'd all but let it happen, after all. He'd been Crownsguard, Noct's personal retinue, and still let himself be all but killed by a civilian. If it hadn't been for Gladio he would have been killed. And what Prompto had said, about having to explain to Noct that he was gone, dead – it hurt, a sharp pain in his chest. His heart squeezed as it continued to race.  
  
A hand smoothed over his forehead and damp hair. 'Gladio's gone to find someone,' Prompto said. 'Don't worry, Iggy. We've got you.'  
  
He'd let them down. He'd almost let Noct down. He needed to train harder, be better...  
  
More hands, picking up his hand by the wrist. It took a moment to realise they were taking his pulse.  
  
He let them. The bed was rocking, and he felt vaguely sure that if he opened his mouth he'd be sick. His head pounded like a hangover. Something wrapped around his arm, squeezing it. Voices, but he couldn't quite make out the words. A woman, and Gladio, and Prompto.  
  
'Ignis?' Prompto's voice, right in his ear. 'Hey, the doc wants to know if you can give her an answer.'  
  
An answer to what, he didn't say, but Ignis supposed it was probably a basic consciousness test. He couldn't tell if his right eye was open – he doubted he could open his left eye at all – so he opened his mouth, licked his lips, and muttered something indistinct.  
  
They seemed satisfied with that, at least to the extent that they didn't bother him again. Ignis turned his head, trying to find a more comfortable position on the bed, but rolling over was beyond him, and all he managed was to arch his back a little.  
  
A hand grasped his own. Then another, smaller, in his other hand. 'So,' Gladio said. 'They're pretty worried 'bout how much blood you lost, and who the fuck knows what drug complicating things on top of it... she's saying some kind of cardiac arrest. They're gonna go see if they have any saline for a drip, but if not, Blondie here can donate straight to you.'  
  
It was a sign of how desperate the hospital was for them to even consider direct blood transfusion. He knew the hospital would have records of their blood types and be able to confirm him and Prompto to be of the same, but the hospital would also be aware of and against the risk of blood borne disease. It was a sign of how poor his own condition must be, Ignis thought muzzily, and made a small sound to show he'd heard. Was he really that bad? Surely not...  
  
'Hang in there,' Prompto was telling him. 'C'mon, Iggy. Stay with us.'  
  
'Think of how bratty Noct'll be, with no one to nag him into line,' Gladio said, and it must have been the first time he'd mentioned Noct by name in almost a year. 'You're a stubborn bastard. Don't give up on us now.'  
  
He was drifting through a sea, thick and cold and metallic tasting. '... a remedy?' Prompto's voice was distant.  
  
'If the antidote didn't work,' Gladio said, voice rough and thick, and Ignis wanted to reach out and stroke back his hair, rest a hand on his shoulder, bring him in to rest his head against Ignis' chest.  
  
Then his arm was being lifted, and he felt a pin-prick into the soft underside of it. Gladio's rough, large hand cradled his cheek. 'There we go,' he said. His voice was uncharacteristically soft, far away. 'Just hang in there and you'll be up and back at work in no time.'  
  
It wasn't like Gladio to go with platitudes. Prompto, out of all of them, perhaps, but even then... Ignis tried to wriggle, for lack of anything better, his back aching fiercely, his joints all protesting.  
  
'We got this. You're gonna be fine.'  
  
Noct was silent. There were Gladio and Prompto's hands in his, but where was Noct's? Ignis made a low sound, a noise of distress, because his tongue was useless and thick in his mouth, his lips refusing to form the correct shapes, and he couldn't manage Noct's name.  
  
A hand on his forehead, but it was Gladio's. _Noct,_ Ignis tried to say, then again: _Noct_.  
  
His heart thumped, painful. He wanted Noct.  
  
If Noct was there, he didn't reply. Just Gladio and Prompto's hands in his, and the hard bed, and his aching body.  
  
He thought he could hear Prompto start to cry, but it was muffled, from a great distance, and Ignis decided his own body was far too heavy for him to be able to do anything about it. He hoped someone else would be able to. He sighed, let his body relax, and fell asleep.  
  
Ignis woke, sliding into consciousness with more resistance than normal. The resistance was wrong, his half-asleep mind decided, and he woke the rest of the way suddenly and unpleasantly, a hard jolt like a kick.  
  
The hospital, the woman who'd stabbed him. Gladio and Prompto. 'Iggy?' Gladio said, close to his left side, voice rough with sleep.  
  
Ignis swallowed to clear his throat. 'Yes,' he said, half expecting not to be able to speak at all, but the word came out coherent, if scratched. 'Gladio. Prompto?'  
  
'Sleeping. Want me to wake him?'  
  
'No, I – thank you. Let him–' He had to swallow again, mouth full of cotton and dust-dry. 'Let him sleep. Water?'  
  
Now he was awake he could hear the sounds of the other patients – breathing, talking quietly, pained. Then a hand was under his shoulders, helping him sit, and the rim of a glass nudged against his mouth. Water spilled a little against his lips and he opened them reflexively. He realised abruptly that he was desperately, painfully thirsty.  
  
Placing his hands on the glass, he tilted it to control the flow, but was silently glad that he didn't have to hold it himself. His arms trembled a little even to be held up – sitting upright even for the few minutes he had been was starting to pile on ache after ache onto his already exhausted body. His hips throbbed, back protesting.  
  
'You almost got us there,' Gladio said, soft, while Ignis drank. 'Making us doubt whether you're actually invincible after all.'  
  
The glass emptied, Ignis let himself be laid back down. 'I apologise,' he said, meaning to add more, but thinking of something suitable was, apparently, beyond him. Words escaped him. Thinking was like trying to chase minnows in waist-deep water. He closed his eye, rolled his shoulders back into the thin mattress. 'When am I to be discharged?'  
  
'Soon as you like,' Gladio said. 'I figure they kicked some poor bastard out to make room for you, and they're gagging to do the same to you now you're not actively croaking it.'  
  
'Ah,' Ignis said. There was a note of aggression in Gladio's voice, a hard tone that dared Ignis to argue back, to start a fight. He was too tired to fight, much less try and unpick why Gladio wanted to in the first place. 'Very well. I'll need to make a report on the incident, as well.'  
  
'Yeah, but there's no rush. Unless there were two blood-soaked, stabbed psychos running about last night, that is. They got her in another part of the hospital, actually. You got her good; chance of survival, not great.'  
  
'Ah,' Ignis said, and wondered just what he'd done to anger her to the extent he evidently had. What had it been? The healthcare? The electricity? He supposed if it had been about the hospital then there was something very ironic about how things had turned out. Then he sighed and pushed the thought away.

He sat up with difficulty, levering his body upright with his hands braced behind him. The bed creaked loudly; a second later came the sound of a plastic chair being scraped across the floor. 'Woah, woah!' Prompto's voice, rough from sleep, from the side of the bed opposite to Gladio. Prompto's hands on Ignis' shoulders, pressing him back down. 'Iggy, no, dude, you stay there!'  
  
Gladio didn't say anything. 'I really should be letting someone else take this bed,' Ignis said, but couldn't manage to fight Prompto – his body trembled, strained, then collapsed back down.  
  
'I mean, yeah,' Prompto said, keeping his hands on Ignis' shoulders, pinning him, 'when you can actually get up and walk out yourself. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure you didn't want Gladio carrying you out of here.'  
  
He was frustratingly, inarguably correct. And even if Ignis could stand up he knew he'd never be able to walk home without being at least half carried, arm over a shoulder like a drunk, or even more of an invalid than he already was.  
  
Prompto let go of Ignis when he relaxed back down into the bed, but stroked his hands down Ignis' arms before pulling away. Frustration bubbled in Ignis' throat, wordless. He resisted the urge to cover his face with his arms, because it would look childish, and also because his arms already ached, and he didn't think moving them would be ideal.  
  
The sound of shifting was a warning that Gladio was moving, but he still startled when Prompto all but fell against him. The bed groaned alarmingly, and Prompto swung his legs up onto the mattress and rolled until he was lying tucked up by Ignis' side, careful not to plant an elbow or knee into Ignis. Ignis shifted to accommodate him, wrapping his arms around Prompto's waist, and lifted his head so Prompto could tuck his own under Ignis' chin.  
  
'You too,' Gladio said. 'Don't think I didn't see how much blood you tricked that nurse into letting you donate.'  
  
Prompto squirmed, and Ignis tightened his grip. 'Oh?' he said.  
  
'It wasn't that much.'  
  
'It was enough to save my life, it seems.'  
  
A small silence fell between them, somehow louder than the background noises of the other patients. 'It – it wouldn't have come to that,' Prompto said. 'But you gotta know I'd do anything for you, Iggy.'  
  
'You both would,' Ignis said, and reached out sideways to grasp for Gladio. 'Thank you, both of you.'  
  
Another silence, then the sound of the chair creaking as Gladio sat down into it. He breathed out, heavy, long, and tired.  
  
'Fuck, I'm just sorry I couldn't do more.' Gladio's voice was pitched light, attempting casual, but he'd always been a poor liar. 'Don't know how much you remember, but you took a bad turn on the way here. I – I should've done more. I really should've brought you straight here.'  
  
'It was enough,' Ignis said, and finally found Gladio's arm, tracing down it to grasp his hand. After a moment, Gladio grasped back. 'I'm alive. I'll have no permanent injuries. I'm sure you've had worse scrapes out in the field where I, in my absence, was entirely, utterly useless.'  
  
'Not really the same thing,' Gladio said, but the fight had gone out of him.  
  
'Yes, I suppose you're right,' Ignis said. 'You saved my life; that is qualitatively different.'  
  
'Shut it, smart-ass,' Gladio said with a breath of laughter, and Prompto wriggled around to prop himself up an an elbow and say: 'Children, children, please!'  
  
Ignis let his head fall back on the pillow, hooking his arm around Prompto and tugging him down. His hand was still caught within Gladio's. He'd have to file a report on the attack, and he'd be hearing about from fairly every group within and around Lestallum – their opinions on his safety and politics and what he should do going forwards and what he should have done but didn't...  
  
He'd have to clean up his room, too. He wondered how many of his belongings were ruined from the blood splatter. Hopefully not too many.  
  
'I will have to impose on one of you until my room is cleaned,' he said, and felt Prompto move a little.  
  
'Sure thing,' Gladio said. 'Any preference who?'  
  
'Oh, no, no way,' Prompto said, the warmth of his breath prickling against Ignis' neck. 'I called dibs! Way back! Ignis! You remember, don't you?'  
  
He did, come to think of it. 'I'm not sure,' he said anyway, because teasing Prompto had been a weakness of his from almost as soon as they'd become friends. 'Gladio, do you remember?'  
  
'Know what, don't think I do.'

'No! No way, you guys, betrayed on all sides!'  
  
Ignis laughed, tired and low, and let himself relax onto the bed, bury himself under the weight and warmth of Prompto's body. The sooner he was recovered enough to leave, the better. He needed to deal with both political and social aftermaths of the attack, the bureaucracy of it all, paperwork like yanking teeth. He'd need to scrub the blood from his room, after it had had all night to soak in.  
  
'I gave you my _blood!_ I called _dibs!_ '  
  
But still, Ignis thought, at least he had somewhere to stay in the meantime. 'I sincerely hope you don't have your shoes on the bed, Prompto,' he said, and listened to the sound of Gladio snorting a laugh as two items hit and bounce on the vinyl floor. Prompto buried a foot between Ignis' ankles, and Ignis hid his smile in the bed-head fluff of Prompto's hair.


End file.
